According to Colleen McCullough's portrayal of Aurelia, her heroine is Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi.
The main source of what little we know about Cornelia's life is Plutarch's biography of her sons Tiberius and Gaius. She was the daughter of Scipio Africanus, who defeated Hannibal, and married Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, who was much older than she was. When he found two snakes on his bed he called in the soothsayers and was told that if he must kill one or the other, but if he killed the male one he would die shortly and if he killed the female one, Cornelia would die. He killed the male one and was generally thought to have made the right decision.
Despite being wooed by very eligible suitors, including the king of Egypt, Cornelia devoted herself after her husband's death to bringing up her children, although only three out of the twelve reached adulthood. She was much admired for this and collections of her letters were published towards the end of her life. Cornelius Nepos in a lost work preserved parts of a letter to her son Gaius from the time he decided to run for tribune. However, not everyone agrees that it is genuine. It can be read in Latin at Bibliotheca Augustana. My translation follows:
You will say it is a fine thing to take vengeance on one’s enemies. It does not seem finer or greater to anyone than it does to me, but only if it were possible to go after this with the republic safe. In so far as it is not possible for this to be done, then hopefully our enemies will not perish for a long time and on many sides and remain as they now are rather than the republic being done away with or perishing.
I would dare swear in formally drawn up words, that besides those who killed Tiberius Gracchus no enemy has handed me so great a nuisance and so much trouble as you have on account of these things, you who of all those children I used to have ought to have endured and taken care so that I would have the least amount of anxiety in my old age and so that whatever you did you would want it to make me happy and would consider it impious to do any great thing against my opinion, especially when there is so little left of my life. Is it possible for so brief a time to help so that you will not act against me and do away with the republic? At what point will this stop? Will our family ever refrain from running insane? Will there ever be any moderation in this matter? Will we ever stop and abandon suffering and offering these disturbances? Will this confusion and disturbances to the republic ever cause shame? But even if it were not possible for that to be done, at least try for the tribuneship when I am dead. Do what you want for all I care when I cannot feel it. When I am dead you will hold a memorial service and call on your ancestral gods. At that time won’t you be ashamed to offer up prayers to those gods you desert and abandon while they are here alive? Hopefully Jupiter will not allow you to carry on with this, nor will such madness enter your mind. And if you do carry on I am afraid that it will be your own fault if you bring such great trouble on your whole life that you will never be able to please yourself in safety.
